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County clerk: Anonymity and efficiency - Boulder County's ballots allow for both

By Hillary Hall

Posted:
09/16/2012 01:00:00 AM MDT

For each election, Boulder County develops a sound plan for designing and printing our ballots -- one that protects voter anonymity while allowing for an efficient tallying process. Since there seems to be greater interest than usual in this topic as Election Day nears, I'd like to offer an overview of why our county's ballot design makes sense. I'll also address some of the criticism that's turned up in recent articles and opinion pieces.

Boulder County has had barcodes on its ballots since 2004. The Hart voting system our county uses requires barcodes for the scanning equipment to read and tally votes properly. The three barcodes on our ballots identify the election, the precinct and style, and a number used to tie a ballot to its digital image in our scanning equipment. Some critics have always disliked and challenged the barcodes, saying they create the potential for a voted ballot to be linked to a voter. However, the barcodes have been supported by several Secretary of State rules and court decisions over the past eight years. And my office has always had safeguards in place to protect voter anonymity. I know of no instance of a voter being linked to their voted ballot in Boulder County.

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Recently in Chaffee County, a voter found that numbers on the outside of ballot envelopes in the 2012 primary could be related to information on the detachable stubs on ballots inside the envelopes. It was sloppy and upsetting. However, it's not analogous to Boulder County because we use a different ballot design that does not use detachable stubs.

Following the Chaffee County problem, the Colorado Secretary of State's office banned the use of ballots containing "any unique or sequential number, or a barcode containing a unique or sequential number." Boulder County and more than 40 other Colorado counties use the Hart system, so an order like this can present serious challenges to election officials when it arrives less than a month before ballots are designed and printed for the presidential election.

In Boulder County, we had already developed a solution. The numbers on our ballots repeat and are not sequential. Starting with the June primary -- the first election held after a state Supreme Court ruling said voted ballots should be publicly reviewable -- we began printing ballots with repeating numbers on them. We've expanded upon that practice for the Nov. 6 election. At least 10 voters in the county will receive the exact same ballot with the exact same numbers.

The presence of barcodes on ballots isn't trivial for our office. During an election, we process tens of thousands of ballots in batches of 150. If a ballot doesn't scan properly, it's crucial that our staff be able to zero in on the rejected ballot, find it in the batch of 150 and either rescan it or mark it for further review. Using the unusual, but not unique, number on our ballots allows our system to function properly and efficiently.

Boulder County is by no means alone in having barcodes on its ballots for the upcoming general election. All Hart counties in Colorado will have them. Other counties may experiment with using a single number for each precinct style, rather than the repeating number system we use. For counties with 20,000 voters, that might be a slow but reasonable option. For Boulder County, which has about 162,000 active, registered voters (with hundreds more registering each week), it's not viable. It would stretch hours of ballot tallying to days.

If I were forced to choose between voter anonymity and efficiency in ballot processing, I'd choose anonymity every time. But it's not a choice we have to make in Boulder County. We've already met with the Secretary of State's staff and explained why our plan makes sense. We think it's a practical, even creative, solution.

Meanwhile, critics who dislike the barcodes have filed a restraining order to stop us from printing our ballots as designed. This would effectively cripple Boulder County's election equipment during a presidential election in which Colorado is poised to be a swing state. My office has filed a response demonstrating our ballots are anonymous and the restraining order is unnecessary. A judge will weigh in later this month. We welcome the court's clarity on this topic. Whatever the outcome, mail ballots will be sent to voters beginning the week of Oct. 15.

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